31 July 2012

Our 2012-2013 Homeschool Curriculum Choices

I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited about choosing our curriculum for the upcoming year. I start thinking about it way back in the early spring and generally have my choices made by early summer. This past May I was able to attend a regional homeschool convention and visit some great vendors, so I have had nearly every single book we will use this year for a couple of months already. I can't wait to dive in!

Now let's look at our lineup for this year.

First, the family subjects--we have several of those. It's great to be able to come together from individual studies and work together on some subjects.

Science: we are continuing with Apologia's Exploring Creation series with Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We really love this series and can't wait to start learning about zoology this year. We will also be using the Junior Zoology Notebooking Journal that goes with this book. This year I plan to split the notebooking activities between my two kiddos. I think both kiddos will enjoy the notebooking activities more without becoming tired of them or overwhelmed by all of them.

History: we are continuing to use the Story of the World, moving into Volume III this year. I hope to have Volume II finished by the time we start back full-time. We have been reading through the summer and still have a little ways to go, but we really enjoy SOTW so it's enjoyable for us. This will be our third year to use it and also the corresponding activity books. We always learn so much and have a lot of fun doing the extra activities.

We are planning to study a Foreign Language full-time this year for the first time and while there was some debate about French I have decided to go with Spanish this year. We will us R.E.A.L. Homeschool Spanish (another review product from last year that you can read more about here).

And now for the individual subjects.

Language Arts for The Princess {grade 4}: last year we really liked Total Language Plusand will continue those units this year beginning with The Whipping Boy. After that will come Shiloh and Pippi Longstocking. I have decided to supplement some extra grammar exercises with TLP as well and found what looks like a great little workbook at the homeschool convention. These Daily Skill Builders are short exercises that will be great to reinforce grammar rules already learned and also teach yet-to-be-learned rules.

Mr. B {grade 2} will continue to use First Language Lessons {love!} along with various readers. He is reading fairly well, I think, but he is more of a reluctant reader than The Princess so I am trying to avoid any boring readers. Not all readesr are boring and I have used a few that he has enjoyed, but I also mix in fun books that are on his reading level to keep his interest in reading out loud to me. I have seen much improvement over this past year--and even more over this summer--so I'm excited to see even more progress this coming year.

Of course, we always have a family read-aloud going at our house as well. We are currently reading books in The Five Little Peppers series.

For Handwriting (yes, we still do that) we love theGetty-Dubay books. The Princess is on book E this year, while Mr. B begins book C.

For Math we are sticking with Singapore for our 2nd year. I was very pleased with is last year and the kiddos did well with it so I don't want to make any change this year (this is our 3rd math curricula to use so I am happy that we seem to have found a good fit).

Of course, we will continue our composer and artist studies, choosing one of each per month to focus on. You can read more about how we do those here.

The Princess has also requested that we start piano lessons with her again. While I don't really play, I did take lessons myself for several years and know the basics. And I did buy some great beginner books a couple of years ago that we have not yet used. So we're all set to begin. I hope that she will stick with it this time.

And I think that about wraps it up for this year! Of course, we will also be trying new things via the Schoolhouse Review Crew and we'll be taking co-op classes throughout the year as well (more on those later this week). I am really looking forward to this year!

This post is linked to the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop: Curriculum Week and also the Back-to-Homeschool Blog Hop.

We enjoy the Apologia science books too, my kids like reading them for fun. We're using bits our of Zoology 1 to go with my younger kids insect studies right now. I've got 7 kiddos age 11 yrs down to 6 mos, you can peek at our curruculum choices here if you want: http://ourbusyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2012/08/curriculum-for-seven-kids-2012-2013.html

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I am a fully devoted follower of Christ, a wife and partner in ministry to my awesome husband, a mother to our two precious children, and a homemaker. Here is where I talk about my family, cooking, homeschooling, traveling and life in general. I'm so glad you stopped by! I hope you enjoy your visit~don't forget to leave a comment so I can come visit you, too!